I remember reading Black Hawk Down not long after it came out in print (and saw a couple of the original Philadelphia Inquirer series that spawned it). It is one of my favorite non-fiction books and always recommend it to people. One of the common criticisms I hear is that there's not enough context in terms of the history and politics going on at the time. I believe that this is one of its strengths - it allows us to focus on what we, as a society, may ask our military, which is composed of our family and friends, to do in our name. We are then able to ask, "Is it worth it?"
One of the most important things that we can do is to continue to serve as a model of a reasonably free and democratic republican-style government. We've kept it going, uninterrupted, for over 200 years. Every two years we permit a peaceable and civil "regime change" to a certain extent (U.S. House of Rep. every two years, Senate seats staggered to 1/3 of the chamber every two years, President every four years). We haven't had to overhaul our entire government (what number are the French on now, the Sixth Republic?) every so often - very rarely we tack on an amendment to the Constitution and the number of pages of federal code is, I'm guessing, pretty intimidating.
The perils of serving as a model is that we run the risk of inspiring revolution and reform in a country, previously gripped in the clutches of an oppressive junta or in other political dire straits, that decides its new, democratically-flavored government is going to not necessarily agree with us. Just because we are the model does not make us the detailed blueprint. That is not reason for sword-rattling or other undiplomatic gestures from the outset. (Of course, if they snub us, we are entitled to snub them - it's par for the course.) We talk, we play hardball if they want to play hardball, and we hope that our example will eventually inspire them to become amenable to our position.
I'm still not sure there's a right way to intervening in places where there is rampant genocide and brutality that won't backfire. On the one hand, the capacity to stop it is likely in the grasp of our military. It may not be pretty, but we can most likely put out a fire. But how do we make sure it doesn't happen again there? There's a quote by Lawrence of Arabia about it being better that instead of us British Westerners doing the work in an ideal manner we let the people who actually live there do it in their own way, which may only appear to be tolerable to our eyes. The dilemma here is that we send in overwhelming military force, but do we simply then back off?
I always figure the quality of a book is proportional to the discussion it inspires. BHD is one of the great non-fiction books in a good long while, I'd say.
ETA - sorry about that delete, accidentally striked out a bunch of text by accident. Whoops....
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-04-27 11:38 pm (UTC)One of the most important things that we can do is to continue to serve as a model of a reasonably free and democratic republican-style government. We've kept it going, uninterrupted, for over 200 years. Every two years we permit a peaceable and civil "regime change" to a certain extent (U.S. House of Rep. every two years, Senate seats staggered to 1/3 of the chamber every two years, President every four years). We haven't had to overhaul our entire government (what number are the French on now, the Sixth Republic?) every so often - very rarely we tack on an amendment to the Constitution and the number of pages of federal code is, I'm guessing, pretty intimidating.
The perils of serving as a model is that we run the risk of inspiring revolution and reform in a country, previously gripped in the clutches of an oppressive junta or in other political dire straits, that decides its new, democratically-flavored government is going to not necessarily agree with us. Just because we are the model does not make us the detailed blueprint. That is not reason for sword-rattling or other undiplomatic gestures from the outset. (Of course, if they snub us, we are entitled to snub them - it's par for the course.) We talk, we play hardball if they want to play hardball, and we hope that our example will eventually inspire them to become amenable to our position.
I'm still not sure there's a right way to intervening in places where there is rampant genocide and brutality that won't backfire. On the one hand, the capacity to stop it is likely in the grasp of our military. It may not be pretty, but we can most likely put out a fire. But how do we make sure it doesn't happen again there? There's a quote by Lawrence of Arabia about it being better that instead of us
BritishWesterners doing the work in an ideal manner we let the people who actually live there do it in their own way, which may only appear to be tolerable to our eyes. The dilemma here is that we send in overwhelming military force, but do we simply then back off?I always figure the quality of a book is proportional to the discussion it inspires. BHD is one of the great non-fiction books in a good long while, I'd say.
ETA - sorry about that delete, accidentally striked out a bunch of text by accident. Whoops....